On Friday, a Palestinian worker was injured in settlers attack while he was working in Beitar Illit settlement that was built on the lands of Husan, Nahalin and Wadi Fukin.

Red Crescent emergency director, Abdul Halim al-Ja'afra, said that they received a call from the Israeli liaison saying that a Palestinian worker, whose name is Khaled Hussein Hamamrah, 40, was attacked and injured on the lands of Beitar Illit settlement.

The ambulance rushed to the place, and started diagnosing him, and according to his statement, we knew that he was attacked by a sharp tool by one of the settlers while he was working: the settler cut his left ear, wounded his right eye and severely beat him on the head.

Then Hamamrah was transferred to Bethlehem Arab Society Hospital, to continue his treatment.

On Friday, a group of armed settlers raided Solomon Pools area in al-Khader village, south of Bethlehem, started to explore the place from all its sides and took pictures for the conference center.

Settlers headed to one of the pools and centered there, and started to do their rituals

The activist against the wall and settlement, Awad Abu Sway, said that around 200 settlers from Efrat settlement, which was built near al-Khader village, raided Solomon Pools area, and surrounded the conference center, with intensive Israeli security procedures, as they were accompanied by the Israeli army.

Abu sway also said that the settlers started to take some pictures for the center’s surrounding area, before they centered in the third pool and in al-Attan area’s lands. They also started to do Tehilim rituals: reciting Psalms at the place.

A large group of settlers Friday morning invaded the historic Berak Sulaiman and Qasr al-Mo'tamarat (Convention Palace) in the town of al-Khadr to the south of Bethlehem, in the southern West Bank.

Local sources said that about 200 Jewish settlers invaded the two areas under IOF protection and they refuse to leave claiming ownership of the land.

The sources said that the two sites are rich archaeological sites and the settlers have been trying to appropriate them for a long time claiming that they are Jewish sites and Palestinians have no right to them.

The sources added that settlers filmed the area surrounding of Qasr al-Mo’tamarat before moving to the third pool of Berak Sulaiman where they took position and carried out some religious rituals.

The settlers then moved on towards the UM Rukba neighbourhood in the town, near a settlement outpost there.

Rabbi Yeshayahu Rotter: living by rules he devises and which only he understandsRabbi Yeshayahu Rotter founded Rotter.net, one of Israel’s most popular gossip and news sites (Alexa ranks it 72nd of all Israeli sites). He is a Haredi Jew who teaches 12th grade at a Haifa yeshiva which belongs to the Bnai Akiva branch of Orthodox Judaism. Surprisingly, considering the extremism of his politics, Bnai Akiva is considered one of the more moderate sects in the Orthodox movement. Rotter is one of the most far right-wing figures in the Israeli media world. He not only supports the most extreme of the settler movement, he advocates violence and defiance of state authority to enforce their prerogatives to settle and retain every inch of the Occupied Territories. His son, Meir, is a policeman known not only for beating up Sheikh Jarrah protesters at their weekly protests against Palestinian home expulsions, but for bragging about this at Rotter.net using a pseudonym. Israeli blogger Moni Dvir just published a post (Hebrew) about Rabbi Rotter that made me realize I knew very little about him, and that what I did think I knew, was based on some suspect assumptions which the man himself has disseminated to the public. In a 2007 Maariv interview (Hebrew), Rabbi Rotter claimed he earned a PhD in Jewish Studies from Boston University. In a separate interview at his own site, he further claims he earned this degree in 1998. He also claims to have a BA and MBA from a third-tier Israeli private college, Yozmot (this link appears to be to the institution mentioned in the Maariv interview, though I can’t be 100% certain). This bears inspection. A number of us have not been able to verify his doctoral degree. The BU alumni office cannot locate any alumnus by his name. Neither Google Scholar nor an online search of doctoral dissertations turns up anything by him. In reply to my specific request that he confirm the degree mentioned in Maariv, he would only say he had the degrees mentioned in the article from universitaot angliot, which could mean “British” universities or “English-speaking” universities. This seemed a deliberate obfuscation. Repeated civil attempts to get him to be more specific ended in some rather nasty, smearish threats on his part which I’ll go into later. The best we can say is that while Rotter claims a doctorate, he either doesn’t have one or no record of one exists after numerous attempts to confirm one. I haven’t attempted to confirm with Yozmot whether he has the business degrees he claims from that school. Though it’s such a poorly considered institution I wouldn’t be surprised if he did earn degrees there.UPDATE: An Israeli reader brought to my attention a story, which has been subsequently confirmed by someone formerly close to the Rotter family, and by this report (Hebrew), that the rabbi worked for Bank Yerushalayim in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Money was allegedly stolen, he was suspected of theft, the bank made a complaint and police opened a criminal file against him. No charges were ever brought, but he was forced to leave the bank, which was when he moved to Haifa where his parents lived. He appears to have an inordinate acquisitive urge, for which there’s nothing wrong in an ordinary person, but which for a rabbi seems somehow grasping and inappropriate. Another claim made in the Maariv article is that Rotter is an IDF officer: [He] served in an armored unit and was an officer. This too is a fudge. In a separate interview the rabbi published on his own site, he notes that during his active service he was a sergeant (not officer-rank). He now serves as a chaplain, which automatically makes his an officer. So in the Maariv story, he appears to make greater claims for his IDF service than are actually warranted. He seems to want readers to believe he was a combat officer, which he was not. In addition, before his IDF service he attended a yeshiva whose students were largely exempted from military duty. Some students could attend a truncated version of service. Given his religious affiliation, my Israeli sources tell me it’s likely he didn’t serve the full three years other Israelis do when they do their duty. Rotter reveals a rather extraordinary bit of deception, which he proudly claims for himself. He states he’s angry that the Israeli media doesn’t credit the scoops published at his site (as if he owned them or researched and published them himself). So he performed a test. After a terror attack during which the terrorist was wounded and captured, Rotter supposedly published a “scoop” saying that the Palestinian had AIDS. Sure enough, Alex Fishman published (allegedly) a story stating the militant had AIDS. Rotter even notes that all the soldiers involved in capturing the attacker had to get AIDS tests and endure extended exams to ensure they were not infected. Don’t know about you, but I’m astonished a rabbi would engage in such deliberate infliction of suffering on all those soldiers and their families, who would not know for sure whether or not they had gotten AIDS from contact with this man. And Rotter even reveals this publicly in the newspaper with no shame whatsoever! But there’s an even worse problem with this story, according to the Seventh Eye, Israel’s major media watchdog publication, Rotter’s story is a crock (Hebrew). Never happened. Not a word of truth in it. The reporter queried Alex Fishman, who denied he’d ever written any such story and a search of Yediot Achronot’s archive never turned up one. So now we have an Israeli rabbi who not only boasts of deceiving his readers, the Israeli media and the IDF by trickery, but who made the story up in its entirety. I’d guess that one of the reasons Rotter chose Alex Fishman to smear is because he thinks he’s a filthy traitor and media leftist, phrases which commonly echo through the Rotter website in comment threads. I have reported on, and spoken with Fishman a number of times in the past few months due to his excellent reporting about Iran. And this is not the kind of journalist who comes anywhere near doing the sort of shoddy journalism of which Rotter accuses him. In fact, it is Rotter himself who is the shoddy liar, it appears. Though you’d never know it from the rabbi himself, who continues to claim the incident happened precisely as he presented it in the interview. Except somehow he couldn’t manage to provide any proof to the reporter when it was requested. Does this remind you of the story about his alleged PhD? Now, let’s look at how the good rabbi operates his website. In 2007, he claimed he had 50,000-100,000 visitors every day. By 2011, that number had risen to 1-million according to the marketing come-on offered to potential advertisers. That’s a mighty big jump. But if you’re Matt Drudge or Wonkette, I suppose it’s possible. But is Rotter.net in that league? Readers of the site (and I) have noticed a rather peculiar behavior. If you keep a page of the site open in your browser open for any length of time, when the page refreshes it doesn’t take you back to the same page. Rather, it takes you back to the site’s main page. If you want to continue reading the original page you have to go back to it. That means for every one page you actually visited, three page views might be counted. I’m not an expert in SEO and how these things are done. So I don’t know for sure whether his claims for his site are legitimate or not. But given his lack of candor (to say the least) it’s highly likely that his claims for site traffic may be as highly exaggerated as his claims of having a PhD. I would hope that anyone thinking of advertising at his site would do their own due diligence to ensure that they’re getting what they expect and what they paid for. Returning to the Maariv interview, Rotter makes some rather extraordinary claims about his own and his site’s moral and Jewish standards, which bear examination:Lashon Hara ["gossip" or "slander"] Journalism is the antithesis to lashon hara. The learned rabbis permitted [Jews to be] journalists. Therefore we should rely on their authority that journalism’s purpose is to warn people about crooks. Considering the level of sludge and smears in the Rotter threads, it’s astonishing that the fact that his site is a leading source of lashon hara is completely lost on him. Just to take a few wee small examples. When I publish my own blog scoops there, I’m invariably referred to as “traitor,” “saboteur,” etc. Members have threatened to put a bullet in my head. One even created a hoax FBI press release claiming I’d been arrested for making kiddie porn. That post, at least the good rabbi removed because he likely realized that I might have legal recourse to sue him, as so many others have apparently done before me. Returning to lashon hara, tell me if this sounds like someone for whom this is a cardinal value: Write whatever you wish. I have nothing to hide. Here in Israel am totally transparent. In fact, it would be fitting to engage in this two-man battle. In Google, we’re finding some interesting things about you. I’m not sure they’re true, but I’m sure they’re written in Google. It’s always possible to quote [them] alone. [After reading these items about you] They’ll no longer ask why we sink to this personal [low] level, as they once asked me. Your profile in Israel is quite interesting. Can you believe that someone who claims to oppose lashon hara would stoop to trashing me with the muck and mire that deranged folk have written about me online? Clearly, he didn’t care whether any of it was true or not. Just smearing the kaka around would give him joy. I read that e-mail as a quasi threat, and not being one to take threats lightly, I responded decisively: I would love for you to disseminate some of the nuttier things written about me on Google. Because if you do it will show you to be an utter fool. So please go right ahead. BTW, I’ve never claimed an academic degree I didn’t earn and anyone asking me which ones I have and from which universities gets a straight answer no matter who they are. I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could show the same candor. And the fact that you threaten me with smears because YOU refuse to confirm where & whether you earned degrees, means you are both defensive and appear to have something to hide… Rotter prides himself on all the wedding ceremonies he’s performed. In fact, as part of his entrepreneurial spirit, he’s created his own website to promote Jewish matrimonial bliss and shiduchim (matchmaking). But if you’re disabled or divorced, you’re outa luck. Not allowed. I suppose they’re not good for business. Another itty-bitty problem though–guess who’s divorced? You got it, the good rabbi himself. Dya think he bans himself from his own website? Not on your life. When I first read of this oddness I laughed and laughed. Can you imagine someone who is such a hypocrite? In Maariv, he further waxes rhapsodic about the beauties of Shabbat spent around the dinner table with family and friends. He’s a big devote of Shabbat as any observant Jew should be. There’s only one itty-bitty problem. Rotter.net isn’t shut down on Shabbat. Not only can you access its pages, you can violate the laws of Shabbat by posting there. That’s probably not the worst Shabbat violation though. Rotter is chock full of ads. Anyone who clicks on an ad makes Rabbi Rotter money. He earns money whether they click on a weekday or on Shabbat. But it is a grave sin for a Jew to earn money on Shabbat, which is the supreme day of rest. I don’t know how such a learned rabbi justifies this violation of a halachic prohibition. I don’t even know if anyone’s asked him. No doubt, as with many Orthodox Jews, he’d say rather cynically what non-observant Jews do at his site is their own business and not his. In that sense, he’s the ultimate Jewish libertarian. Though I don’t believe halacha would countenance libertarianism defined in that way. To be clear, I don’t keep the laws of Shabbat. I publish posts on weekdays and on Shabbat. So I’m not criticizing Rotter’s behavior in a blanket or categorical way. I’m saying that on his own terms as an Orthodox Jew, he’s violating halacha and that he’s a moral hypocrite for doing so. A commenter here in the threads noted that in the very early days of the site, it specialized in offering illegal downloads. Now, I have nothing particularly against such sites and won’t argue there’s anything particularly immoral about them (the RIAA takes a different view). But it does seem to me that a rabbi should feel an obligation not to earn money off such an enterprise. Jewish tradition says that a rabbi should hold himself above questionable activities which might be acceptable to an ordinary Jew. Since Jews look to rabbis as moral arbiters, they could construe this type of activity as morally approved when a rabbi does it. A rabbi should set an example, not pander to the lowest moral common denominator. That may be why he has claimed that in those days, his son Noam ran the site. There are reports by Israeli media that he used this story to brush off precisely the moral questions I raised above. I’ve hardly spoken yet about Rotter’s political views, which are also quite interesting: after the Fogel murders he advocated violent price tag attacks against Palestinians. In fact, his comments sounded very close to calls for genocide. He declared he had no faith in the State to avenge Jewish blood and urged settlers and other extremists to do it on behalf of the Jewish people. He was all defiance of the State. In fact, it seemed rather clear that the entire idea of a secular state was rather repulsive and that he would far prefer a halachic theocratic state in which a settler “Judean” ideology reigned supreme.The Rotter forum is also being used (Hebrew) by radical settlers as a sort of real-time emergency band radio to broadcast the movement of the IDF in the Territories so wanted settlers may avoid capture at roadblocks set up outside the most extreme settlements, which house Jewish terrorists who resist evacuation of settlements or engage in acts of violence against local Palestinians and their activist supporters. This adds to the image of Rabbi Rotter and his media enterprise as a form of resistance to the secular state and its authority. Not that he’s above benefiting from the advertising revenue generated from citizens of that secular state. While Rotter’s claim that he allows free speech for right and left at his site is mainly true, it’s clear that some speech is more free than others. Though I have published many scoops there, I have also had many taken down. And for no apparent reason since they violated no Israeli laws, gag orders or censorship. It appears that Rotter can remove anything he likes and for any reason. So his claims of a free-wheeling website with virtually no ideological limits are largely, but not entirely true. To its credit, Rotter.net is a freer site than many in Israel if you can stand the death threats. I was banned from another site, Fresh, when I posted about Anat Kamm. No reason was given. I was just shown the door.http://fwd4.me/0jMv28 dec 2011

Five structures, several warehouses to be relocated to difference place in West Bank outpost, which will later become neighborhood in settlement.

Representatives of settlers living in Ramat Gilad have reached an agreement with the State, which will see the unauthorized outpost become a neighborhood within the Karnei Shomron Regional Council.

According to the draft agreement, first reported by Ynet, five temporary structures built on private land will be relocated to a different area in the outpost along with a number of warehouses.

The said buildings are inhabited, and Ramat Gilad residents have already expressed their willingness to relocate them in the past, so as not to reach a clash with the security forces.

As part of the agreement, a city building plan will be approved in the future in order to allow the outpost to become part of the Karnei Shomron settlement as a separate neighborhood.

Yesha Council Chairman Danny Dayan, who took part in the negotiations, said Wednesday: "We have finalized the last details and reached an agreement. We'll move a number of structures the State says are located on private lands, and I hope that Ramat Gilad will eventually become a permanent community in the State of Israel.

"I'm definitely satisfied with the agreement, which has prevented unnecessary clashes and will strengthen Ramat Gilad and the settlement enterprise in general."

Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer said in response, "The Ramat Gilad agreement is a deal in which the government surrendered to the Hilltop Youth.

"The settlers are proving that violence pays off and that the outpost method works. First they build illegally, and then they authorize it and basically establish a new settlement."

The defense minister's office said in response, "The defense minister, Defense Ministry and IDF respect and uphold any decision made by the legal system, including the courts and attorney general."

An investigation by the Israeli police has found that a group of right-wing Israeli students from Jerusalem organized a bus to enter the West Bank and attack a military base on December 12, to protest the planned removal of an illegal settlement outpost.

The attack on the military base was one of a number of attacks over the last three weeks by right-wing Israelis, including several attacks on Palestinian mosques and churches in the West Bank and inside Israel. Each of these attacks shared the characteristic of including spraypainted slogans saying “Price tag”, which is a slogan frequently used by right-wing Israelis to declare that the indigenous Palestinian population must “pay a price” every time an illegal settlement outpost is removed.

According to the police investigation, students at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva (Jewish religious school), led by a settler from the West Bank, hired a bus to take forty students from the Yeshiva to attack the military base in the middle of the night on December 12.

The bus stopped and picked up a pile of old tires, and was caught on video stopping at a gas station near the military base to buy several cans filled with gasoline. Upon arrival at the military base, they burned the tires at the entrance of the base chanting "Jews don't expel Jews," and some of the protesters entered the base and vandalized buildings and vehicles.

Police say they have no leads in a separate attack on two commanders of the military base, who were assaulted off-base on a West Bank settlement road that same night .

Among those detained by Israeli police in relation to the series of attacks are well-known Israeli settlers Effi Chaikin, Eliav Eliyahu and Meir Ettinger, who had been living in Jerusalem after being banned from the West Bank due to their involvement in organizing violent attacks against the indigenous Palestinian population.

They are being held in ‘administrative detention’, which is a method used by Israeli troops to detain people without charges for up to six months at a time. This type of detention is usually reserved for Palestinians – an estimated 1,000 of the Palestinian political detainees held by Israeli forces are currently in ‘administrative detention’ without charge. No other Israeli prisoners are known to be held in ‘administrative detention’.

A group of Jewish settlers Tuesday at dawn broke into Joseph’s Tomb, east of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, according to local sources.

Sources told WAFA that dozens of extremist settlers broke into the tomb and performed prayers and rituals under the Israeli soldiers tight security.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided the eastern area of Nablus, particularly the vicinity of Balata refugee camp, fired acoustic bombs and searched several Palestinian houses, tampering with their contents.

Over 300 Orthodox Jews threw rocks at police, burned rubbish bins, and chased officers after a controversial sign on a main road was removed.

The sign encouraged gender segregation in the public sphere.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up pledges to curb Jewish zealotry in Israel on Sunday after an 8-year-old girl in Beit Shemesh complained of being menaced by ultra-Orthodox men who deemed her dress immodest.

The statement appeared to have been prompted by an expose on Israel's top-rated weekend news about intra-Jewish friction in Beit Shemesh, a town of about 87,000 people near Jerusalem.

The ultra-Orthodox make up only about 10 percent of Israel's population of 7.7 million.

But their high birthrates and bloc voting patterns have helped them secure welfare benefits and wider influence. One of Netanyahu's biggest partners in the coalition government, Shas, is a party run by rabbis.

A group of Jewish settlers attacked the Palestinian Customs Office and Public Safety Commission in Hebron on Sunday, destroyed their vehicles, and battered the staff, Monday said a press release by the Ministry of National Economy.

The ministry condemned the attack on its employees while they were confiscating chicken supplies smuggled illegally from Carmel settlement southeast of Hebron to the Palestinian market.

Custom officers monitor and control any illegal entrance of settlements’ products and services to the Palestinian market as part of the ministry’s campaign to keep the Palestinian market free of settlements' goods.

Groups of Jewish extremists Monday broke into al-Aqsa mosque through Bab El-Magharbeh (Dung Gate) bridge, roaming its yard under the protection of Israeli police, according to witnesses.

Senior Jewish rabbis, last week, called on their supporters to storm Al-Aqsa mosque for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah to perform religious Talmudic rituals in the mosque’s yard.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Jewish settlers, under the protection of Israeli soldiers and police late Sunday night, roamed the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem in a provocative march amid drumming and chanting of racist slogans against Arabs and Palestinians, aiming to disturb Palestinian Jerusalemites.

To be noted, a law draft was submitted on Sunday to the Israeli parliament (Knesset) to declare Jerusalem the unified capital of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority official responsible for monitoring settlement activity in the northern West Bank said a recent settler rally targeting his work would not stop him from exposing settler crimes "to the whole world."

Dozens of extremist settlers rallied on Sunday on a main road west of Nablus, holding signs of protest against PA official Ghassan Daghlas.

Some settlers held up pictures of Daghlas, calling him an "inciter against settlers and settlements."

The PA official said that “such threats will not divert us from continuing to expose settler assaults to the whole world.”

Settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians have increased by more than 50 percent this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The real fact behind hitting the settler in asera alqiplia and the settlers violence.

In this video you see how the Yitzhar settlers attacked the village of Asira Qebleia, and they throw stones at people, and one of the settlers attacked them, and the people defend themselves and hit him.

Israeli war minister Ehud Barak hailed the Palestinian authority security forces for its role in protecting Jewish settlers and preventing any attacks on them in the West Bank.

Barak told a Hebrew radio that Israel should continue to pump money to the Palestinian authority (PA) despite its reconciliation talks with Hamas because this helps finance its security forces that work for Israelis. He added there is a state of security and stability in the West Bank and Israelis are content with this calm resulting from the cooperation between the Israeli army, the Shin Bet and the PA security forces.

Commenting on the Arab revolutions, he expressed his fears of these uprisings, saying the former Arab regimes were replaced with Islamic ones and this would not serve Israel's interests.

In the context of the PA-Israeli security cooperation, the PA security forces kidnapped during the last two days two Palestinian citizens affiliated with Hamas from their homes in Beta town near Nablus city and summoned many others in Nablus and Ramallah.

Antiquities Authority estimates that irreversible damage to artifacts was caused by ultra-Orthodox vandals.

Unidentified vandals have severely damaged an archeological site near the northern town of Afula on Thursday.

A receptacle containing equipment and antique artifacts was torched in the incident.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) estimated that ultra-Orthodox individuals are behind the hostile act.The IAA said that there have been several confrontations recently over the site, which was damaged in the construction of a nearby bypass.

The police said they have launched a joint investigation with the fire department, but have yet to apprehend any suspects.

On Wednesday, a riot took placein another northern dig, which is being conducted prior to the expansion of Highway 65 in the area; members of the haredi group Atra Kadisha disrupted the archeologists' work after they were informed they cannot loiter there.

Barshad said that the incident was indicative of a wider trend.

"Every time that we confront the haredim in one site, they go damage another site," he said. "(…) If we don't do exactly as they please, they harm archeological digs."

Among the artifacts that were burnt was pottery that was used between the Israelite and Persian periods (1,000-500 BC).

"The damage erased several lines from our history books," Dror Barshad, an IAA archeologist, said.

"Beyond the financial damage, which is estimated at tens of thousands of shekels, the incident has caused irreversible damage… that will prevent us from completing the puzzle of the settlement sequence in the region."

Israeli occupation forces backed Jewish settlers who were engaged in clashes with citizens in in the Old City of Jerusalem on Wednesday evening after the settlers assaulted a Jerusalemite child.

Local sources said that the occupation forces also attacked a wedding in Wad street and broke the nose of a 16-year-old child in the process. They said that those forces arrested three young men.

Meanwhile, Jewish settlers in Al-Khalil uprooted 27 Palestinian olive trees in Shuweika village to the east of Dhaheria town in Al-Khalil province on Wednesday afternoon and wrote anti-Arab slogans and threats on walls in the village.

Mousa Samamra, an inhabitant in Shuweika, said that settlers from the same settlement of Shama had destroyed 55 olive trees he owned in the same area a few months ago.

Jewish settlers storm the Aqsa Mosque

Three groups of Jewish settlers in the early hours of Thursday morning stormed the Aqsa Mosque through the Maghareba Gate which is closed to Muslims.

Quds information centre quoted eyewitnesses as saying that the settlers could not tour the Mosque because Palestinians from Jerusalem and 1948- occupied lands confronted them.

One of the Aqsa Mosque guards said that the settlers made a quick incursion into the Aqsa Mosque plazas under the heavy protection of occupation police.

A number of Jewish rabbis called on their followers to invade the Aqsa Mosque plazas and carry out religious rituals on the occasion of the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

Aqsa Mosque guards expressed fear that invasions of the Mosque by groups of extremist settlers to mark the Jewish holiday will continue.

21 dec 2011

Settlers Uproot 30 Olive Trees, Write Anti-Arab Slogans in Hebron

A group of settlers Wednesday uprooted 30 olive trees and wrote anti- Arab slogans in Al-Shweka area in Al-Thahria, a town south of Hebron, according to security sources.

Sources told WAFA that a group of settlers uprooted olive trees in Al- Shweka, owned by Palestinian resident Othman Al-Samamiri, from Al-Thahrieh, and wrote Anti- Arab slogans in the area.

This is not the first attack by settlers against this area, which aim to empty it from its residents in order to build more settlements.

Strict Israeli Military Measures in Jerusalem

Israeli forces Wednesday imposed strict security and military measures on Jerusalem, especially the Old City, amid callings by extremist Jewish groups to invade al-Aqsa Mosque compound to celebrate Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, later this day, according to WAFA correspondent.

The strict measures came in line with intensified presence of Israeli police, border guards and military patrols that roam Jerusalem streets.

Extremist Jewish groups have been calling all week on the internet to invade al-Aqsa mosque to celebrate the Jewish holiday, attend biblical lectures for extremist youth and practice religious rituals that jeopardize the sanctity of al-Aqsa mosque, with a promise of providing food and beverages to participants.

The Palestinian Authority cabinet on Tuesday slammed the Israeli government for failing to prevent settler violence against Palestinian communities.

The cabinet called on Israel to stop settler "terrorism" against Palestinians and urged the international community to prevent the "organized crimes" of settlers.

In the weekly meeting in Ramallah, officials warned that ongoing settler violence could jeopardize stability in the region, as both Islamic and Christian holy places have been repeatedly attacked by Jewish extremists.

The PA cabinet also condemned Israeli's recent decision to market tenders for over 1,000 housing units in the West Bank, saying that it is in clear violation of international law.

The spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that the announcement was "a devastating message" for the peace process.

Settler attacks in the West Bank have intensified over recent weeks.

Three mosques near Ramallah, Jerusalem and Salfit have been set on fire since Dec. 7. Vandals sprayed the Star of David and racist graffiti including "Muhammad is a pig" and "A good Arab is a dead Arab" in Hebrew on the Jerusalem mosque's walls.

In other attacks, over 200 settlers stormed the Nablus village of Asira al-Qibliya on Dec. 11 and damaged Palestinian homes and cars.

On Dec. 13, over 50 settlers infiltrated an Israeli military base near Tulkarem and set fire to tires and vandalized vehicles.

Settlers attacked a Palestinian choir bus returning from a carol concert in Nablus on Dec. 17 and on Dec. 19 dozens of settlers raided a Ramallah village and set fire to five cars.

A Hebron village mosque was spray-painted with racist slogans on Monday in the latest string of overtly racist acts of violence.

Settlement building

Israeli settlers number 500,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, living in Jewish-only communities that are illegal under international law.

On Dec. 12 the Israeli government approved construction of 40 homes and a farm in two new settler enclaves near the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Most recently, on Dec. 18, the Israeli ministry of housing and construction announced that they would market tenders for over 1,000 housing units in illegal settlements in the West Bank.

In November, the Israeli housing ministry invited tenders for the construction of more than 800 new homes in Har Homa and Pisgat Zeev, two settlement neighborhoods in occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, as part of a response to a successful Palestinian bid to join UNESCO.

Despite these moves, Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in early December that the Palestinians had decided to "boycott" peace negotiations.

Israeli forces on Tuesday bulldozed a main road serving several villages in southern Nablus, a Palestinian Authority official said.

Ghassan Daghlas, the PA official for monitoring settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that over 30 military vehicles entered the Nablus village of Beita before bulldozers demolished a road in-between the villages of Beita, Osarin and Aqraba.

The Mayor of Huwwara, Moeen Damidi, told the official news agency Wafa that the 4km road was demolished without any warning. It had cost $400,000 to build, he added.

Israeli forces took control of a hilltop east of Beita and erected tents for soldiers to make camp, Daghlas added. Soldiers also took control of a Ayman Ihsan Adeile's home for military purposes.

Witnesses in the area said there had been noticeable military and settler activity on Tuesday morning.

The villages of Beita, Osarin and Aqraba are all technically in Area A, which is under full Palestinian security and administrative control.

The land between the villages is Area B, under Israeli security control, and reflects the wider physical composition of the West Bank where Palestinian population centers exist as isolated islets.

Area C, under full Israeli control, forms 60 percent of the West Bank.

19 dec 2011

Teens clean up hate graffiti from torched mosque

To fight stigma that settlers are 'violent vandals,' students from Ma'ale Adumim clean up hate slogans daubed on mosque walls in 'price tag' operation.

A Jerusalem mosque that was torched last week in a "price tag" operation turned into a platform for religious and secular teens who wished to demonstrate their aversion to the recent wave of attacks on Muslim holy sites. Fifteen students from the Eitan pre-military school in Ma'ale Adumim arrived at desecrated mosque Monday on a mission to clean up the hate graffiti that remained on its walls.

"This is not a political act," the teens stressed. "There has never been a reality in which Jews defaced prayer houses, and we won't allow it to happen now either."

Yair Ansbacher, a rabbi teaching at the school, said that the activity was meant to show that the majority of settlers are against the hostile acts.

"There are many opinions at the school, including opinions that are very Right-leaning… but they all oppose violence against IDF troops and vandalism – especially vandalism against places of worship," Ansbacher said.

"We are a small group of people who aim to right a wrong that was caused by another small group of people," he added. "(…) We have no intention to clash with anyone, but we do intend to speak out against the radicalization taking place in Israeli society."

The rabbi asserted that the "price tag" operations create a dangerous gap within Israeli society.

"This is not the true face of Judaism," he said. "We are erasing these slogans with hopes of erasing this stain."

MK Lia Shemtov (Yisrael Beiteinu) lauded the students' actions, and claimed that they are representative of the settler youth.

"Over the past few weeks there has been lame attempt to label all settlers as violent vandals, which is in fact not true," she said, noting that the highest rates of IDF enlistment often register in the settlements.

Shemtov condemned the recent "price tag" acts, saying that the vandals will be held responsible.

Palestinian Muslim and Christian senior figures Monday warned of the rise in Israeli settler attacks against Muslim and Christian holy places, following Jewish rabbis’ calls to murder Palestinians and Arabs.

Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, Yousef Adees, and Assistant Undersecretary for Christian affairs in the Ministry of Awqaf, Hanna Issa, warned of the increasing number of settler attacks launched against Palestinian holy places.

Adees called on the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the United Nations to take a firm position against these crimes and protect Palestinians from these frequent attacks.

Issa said that over 96 assaults against Muslim and Christian holy places took place since the beginning of 2011 in the West Bank, while 46 assaults occurred in Jerusalem.

He said, “The main purpose of these attacks is to expel Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from their city.”

Issa called on the international community and Security Council to interfere and stop these attacks, which violate the Fourth Geneva convention of 1949 and the Hague convention of 1954.

A Jerusalem court threw out two cases seeking to evict Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem homes, activists said Sunday.

Litigants close to settler organization Elad said the Qaraeen and Farag family homes in East Jerusalem neighborhood Silwan were their property, but the Jerusalem Magistrates Court rejected the claims on Thursday, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center said.

Silwan families have lost a number of homes to demolitions and evictions by Israeli forces. The Sumarin family, who live at the entrance to the neighborhood, face a pending eviction order after their home was transferred by the government to the Jewish National Fund.

Silwan -- adjacent to the Old City's Dome of the Rock compound and Western Wall -- is a focus of Israeli settler moves into East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers illegally built seven-story building Beit Yonatan in Silwan, and a number of court orders decreeing its eviction have never been implemented.

Israel insists that Jerusalem is its "eternal and indivisible" capital, and annexed the city's eastern sector after a 1967 war in a move never recognized by the international community.

For Palestinians, East Jerusalem is the capital of their promised state.

A Hebron village mosque was spray-painted with racist slogans on Monday, locals said, in the fourth such attack in two weeks.

Suspected extremist settlers daubed "price tag" and "Yitzhar" on the walls of the mosque in Bani Naim, which lies opposite the Kiryat Arba settlement.

Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank is notorious for so-called price tag incidents, in which settlers exact revenge on Palestinians and their property for Israeli government policies towards unauthorized settler outposts.

Radical settlers are suspected of upping their attacks in recent weeks, after three mosques near Ramallah, Jerusalem and Salfit were torched and covered in racist graffiti since Dec. 7.

Earlier Monday, dozens of settlers raided Ramallah village Beitin and set fire to five cars, witnesses told Ma'an.

Settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians have increased by more than 50 percent this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israeli settlers number 500,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, living in Jewish-only communities that are illegal under international law.

The Palestinian Authority said on Friday that Israeli forces "do nothing to prevent or punish the rising trend of settler violence."

The mosque arson attacks "shows the contempt which Israel has for the rule of law and for the international community, whose calls for legal behavior are always ignored. Above all it shows contempt for Palestinian lives, religions and property," the PA said.

Settlers burn 5 cars in Ramallah village

Dozens of settlers raided a Ramallah village on Monday morning and set fire to five cars.

Witnesses told Ma'an that Israeli military forces arrived in the village of Biteen and dispersed the settlers without arresting any of them.

Biteen is situated near the village of Burqa, which was attacked by settlers last week.

Jewish settlers on Thursday torched the Burqa village mosque and sprayed racist graffiti in Hebrew on its walls, witnesses said.

That attack came a day after Jewish extremists torched a 13th century mosque in Jerusalem, spraying "Death to the Arabs" and "Muhammad is a pig" on the building.

Settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians have increased by more than 50 percent this year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israeli settlers number 500,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, living in Jewish-only communities that are illegal under international law.

Palestinian cars torched in West Bank

Several cars belonging to the Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been set on fire allegedly by extremist Israeli settlers, Press TV reports.

On Monday, a group of vandals torched the cars of a number of Palestinian residents in the town of Beitin in the central West Bank, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Israeli police are investigating the incident to determine whether the attack was related to the so-called “price tag” policy of the extremist settlers in the West Bank.

Extremist Israeli settlers usually leave graffiti wherever they attack, according to the report, however, no such evidence was found after the Monday incident.

Over the past few months there has been an increase in attacks by the extremist settlers in the West Bank against Palestinian properties, including mosques, farms, homes and cars.

Last week, the extremists set fire to a Palestinian mosque in the village of Burqa.

According to the report, Palestinians are unable to defend their properties as the areas that come under attack are “controlled by Israeli police.”

Moreover, the extremist settlers are “very seldom” brought to justice and the sentences issued against them are “ridiculously low.”

Israeli extremists claim that the “price tag” attacks are carried out against any Israeli policy “to reduce the presence of Jewish settlers and settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).”

"We kept driving and starting singing to cheer ourselves up and encourage the choir members," he said.Bethlehem Bible College choir director Muther Isaac describes the attack

"Tomorrow we will continue our carol tour of the West Bank in Jenin, using the same road, and we are afraid. But we are trying to convince the families that God will protect us."

Hardline settlers have torched mosques near Ramallah, Jerusalem and Salfit since last Wednesday. The latest string of attacks included a rampage on an army base, sparking condemnation in Israel, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu to vow stronger enforcement against lawlessness.

But he rejected a recommendation to classify the Jewish extremists as terrorists, and Israeli lawmakers were set to discuss a law to legalize settlement outposts built on land owned by Palestinians on Sunday.

Extremists amongst Israel's 500,000 strong settler population in the West Bank and Jerusalem reference Israel's measures against outposts in their revenge 'price tag' attacks, usually directed at Palestinians in the West Bank, but recently spilling over into Palestinian sites in Israel and army targets.

Israel distinguishes between state-sanctioned settlement building on occupied Palestinian land and the wildcat outposts, but the international community says all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem break international law.

It is easy to imagine what would have happened had Palestinians invaded an Israeli military base and vandalized vehicles, burned tires, thrown rocks at the brigade commander and injured his deputy.

It would have ended in death, injury or arrest for many of them. But the perpetrators of this week's incident were Jews, not Palestinians, and they threw rocks at both soldiers and Palestinians.

The explanation voiced for the killing of Mustafa Tamimi, who died after being hit in the head by a tear-gas canister during a demonstration in Nabi Saleh on Friday, was that the young Palestinian man had been throwing rocks at an armored Israel Defense Force jeep.

Even had that been true, one cannot ignore the disparity in the response to the stone-throwers in each case, where the only difference was their being Arab in one case and Jewish in the other.

The increasing incidence of settlers throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers and at Palestinians, without incurring return fire from the IDF, proves the hypocrisy of claiming that shooting is a justifiable response to Palestinians who throw rocks.

And Tamimi didn't invade a military base; he was trying to protect his village from the settlers who seek to invade and expropriate it.

The proximity of the two incidents invites comparison, but the disparity in the response has long been evident. Demonstrating Palestinians are met with force - sometimes deadly - and arrests.

Jews in the territories, even when they riot and use violence against Palestinians or the army, are usually accorded what amounts to immunity by both the military and the judicial establishments.

The disparity of response is the symptom of the broader problem, that of the fact of two populations living in the same territory, where each one is under a different legal system and is treated differently by the military.

Israel is selective in its imposition of its law on the settlements and the settlers, creating a regime that discriminates on the basis of national identity. Sometimes Israeli law even applies to Jews who live in the West Bank but are not Israeli citizens.

There is a reason why international law prohibits occupying powers from settling its population in occupied territories. One of the outcomes of such a practice is the de facto annexation of the territory, with the occupying power giving its own nationals broader rights than it does the occupied population. That is the scenario that had played itself out in the West Bank.

Under the current circumstances, when one population and its army are allowed to rule over and use violence against another populuation, it should not come as a surprise that sometimes violence is also directed at the IDF.

The three Arabic dailies Saturday highlighted Israeli political analysts’ views of the “price tag” Jewish terrorists who aim to change the political situation and drag Palestinians and Arabs into a religious war with Israel.

The papers said the “price tag” settlers are Jewish underground terrorists who aim to impose their extreme ideology and pressure the Israeli government not to demand from them to evacuate settlements in the West Bank.

One of the Israeli analysts said, “Those settlers aspire to start a religious war, why else would they attack mosques and insult Prophet Mohammad?”

Al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida highlighted Former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert’s warnings of the rise in attacks by settlers in the West Bank and expected that these attacks will increase in the next few months.

The three papers also focused on Israeli suppression of several weekly demonstrations across the West Bank, injuring dozens of Palestinians and arresting 14 others.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida and al-Quds printed photos of the demonstrations in Nabi Saleh, which took place one week following the death of Palestinian protester Mustafa Tamimi at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

Al-Quds front page story focused on a European secret document that considered condition of the Palestinians in Israel as a fundamental issue not less important than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

It also highlighted what was described as the most violent clashes between protesters and the military in Egypt, which resulted in killing 4 protestors and injuring 500 others.

Al-Hayat al-Jadida reported on Israeli High Court rejection of several appeals against release of 550 Palestinian prisoners in the second part of the October swap deal expected to take place on Sunday.

Al-Quds editorial tackled the settlers’ rise in attacks against Palestinians and their property and questioned whether the Israeli government is going to act and stop these attacks.

It said, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to put an end to these attacks, yet several attacks took place following his statements, which drives us to question the seriousness of Netanyahu’s statements.”

Hamas holds Israeli gov't responsible for spate of mosque attacks

Hamas Movement held the Israeli occupation government fully responsible for the consequences of its support for the Jewish settlers' attacks on mosques in the occupied Palestinian lands of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

"The Palestinian people cannot be intimidated by such practices and will not stand idly watching these racist acts," Hamas stated in a press release on Thursday. "The persistence of the Israeli occupation and its settlers in their war against the houses of God is a flagrant violation of divine laws, and international norms and conventions," the Movement stressed.

It demanded the Arab League and the organization of Islamic cooperation to swiftly move to protect the Islamic holy sites in Palestine from Israel's crimes.

Jewish settlers under military protection intensified lately their attacks on Mosques; the most recent was the arson attack on Annour Mosque in Burqa village east of Ramallah city at dawn Thursday.